This Blog

There are 100 million young people in the Middle East and North Africa. They are a force for change in a region at a crossroads. This blog is focused on ideas for tapping into this immense potential and meeting the aspirations for jobs, justice and dignity.

The World Bank Group (WBG) has clear goals to end poverty by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in every country, both of which guide our operations, analysis, and policy advice. In setting these ambitious goals, it is not surprising to note that the WBG has made the measurement of extreme poverty an explicit corporate goal and has taken up a commitment to undertake a close and reliable monitoring.

In his 2014 annual address known as the ‘Throne speech’, King Mohammed VI of Morocco focused on the less visible but critical aspects of development such as the quality of institutions, the quality of learning, and the quality of interpersonal relations in society. This speech set wheels in motion that have culminated in the launch of the 2017 Economic Memorandum, entitled Morocco 2040 – Emerging by Investing in Intangible Capital.

In eastern Iraq’s Diyala governorate, a bridge connects two cities—Baquba on one bank of the river and Muqdadya on the other. Nothing remarkable about that, you might think, until you know that this bridge had been blown-up by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) cutting off the many Iraqis who commute between the two cities in quest of work or education.

The importance of the early years for children’s development cannot be overstated. Ample evidence from rigorous long-term studies suggests that high-quality early childhood education (ECE) yields numerous benefits for children that affect them well into adulthood. ​

Iraq is a country of riches… it is one of the few countries in the Middle East that has an abundance of mineral resources, in the form of oil and gas, as well as an abundance of water, with the mighty Tigris and Euphrates rivers streaming through the cradle of civilization. Along with this comes the sheer scale of human capital that was built over the centuries since the founding of Baghdad. It was said that “Cairo writes, Beirut prints, and Baghdad reads”.